luckadjusted
NHL Week 1 · 2026-27

2025-26 regular season · October 21, 2025

No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.

Sharks at Islanders, Oct 21, 2025: who deserved to win?

The Islanders beat the Sharks 4–3, but the replays call it close to a coin flip: with the way both teams played, the Islanders win 5 of 10. Luck ran their way: shooting alone was worth 26 points of win probability to the Islanders.

The biggest swing (P1, 10:34 left): Bo Horvat scored on a wrist shot from 22 feet, worth 16 points of win probability to the Islanders.

Final

San Jose Sharks 3
New York Islanders 4

October 21, 2025 · UBS Arena

Luck index +51 Islanders lucky · −51 Sharks

Each team’s own shots from this game, resampled into new games 4,000 times, each a goal at its chance, with the power plays the penalties gave and the pulled goalie at the end: with the way both teams actually played, how often does this performance win? How the replay works

Ten replays. Sharks win 5, Islanders win 5.

  1. 1 SJS 6 NYI 2
  2. 2 SJS 6 NYI 3
  3. 3 SJS 2 NYI 0
  4. 4 SJS 4 NYI 3
  5. 5 SJS 4 NYI 3
  6. 6 SJS 3 NYI 4
  7. 7 SJS 5 NYI 6
  8. 8 SJS 2 NYI 4
  9. 9 SJS 3 NYI 6
  10. 10 SJS 2 NYI 6

Three other ways to ask

Each answers a different question, so none of them replaces the replay above.

No closing line for this game.

Needs the closing line, which this game has not got.

Every shot redrawn at its chance, overtime and the shootout replayed as near coin flips; the shots themselves and every call fixed. The narrowest view of luck.

How 3,999.9 replays ended

Sharks win 51% of them, Islanders 49%. The line is what actually happened: Islanders by 1.

Show as a table
Final margin in the replaysShare of replays
Sharks by 3+21.4%
Sharks by 210.6%
Sharks by 119.0%
Islanders by 119.2%
Islanders by 210.1%
Islanders by 3+19.7%

Where the luck was

What the luck was worth

Every lucky and unlucky play, weighted by the moment it happened: its swing in win probability, added up by kind. A post hit in a blowout counts for nothing; the same post with a minute left in a tie game can be most of a win.

Swings add up across a game, so in one that went back and forth they can pass 100%. On the scoreboard the same luck was worth 0.0 goals to the Islanders: the final margin was Islanders by 1, without the luck Islanders by 1. Luck shares are the fitted ones (how much of each kind is luck).
ShootingUnblocked attemptsGoalsExpected goalsAbove expected
Sharks4933.71−0.71
Islanders4343.16+0.84

Regulation with both goalies in. Expected goals: our model of each shot’s chance from where and how it was taken (distance, angle, shot type, rebound, rush, strength), adjusted for the shooter’s and the goalie’s records. A team above expected finished better or met a weaker night in goal; 75% of the gap counts as luck (why that share).

Calls

Every penalty that put a team on the power play, and every goal taken off the board on review, with what it did to the helped team’s chance of winning at that moment. Calls don’t count toward luck by default: who draws penalties repeats from game to game like a skill (how calls are valued). Switch them on below.

WhenCallWin probability for
P1 12:05 Interference on the Sharks (Mario Ferraro): 2 minutes on the power play +4% NYI
P1 3:45 Interference on the Islanders (Scott Mayfield): 2 minutes on the power play +4% SJS
P1 1:47 Holding on the Sharks (Sam Dickinson): 2 minutes on the power play +4% NYI
P2 10:36 Holding the stick on the Islanders (Jonathan Drouin): 2 minutes on the power play +3% SJS
P2 7:14 Tripping on the Sharks (Vincent Desharnais): 2 minutes on the power play +3% NYI
P3 9:19 Tripping on the Islanders (Scott Mayfield): 2 minutes on the power play +5% SJS

When it happened

Islanders’ chance of winning

As low as 37% and as high as 100%. Numbers mark the biggest luck moments, listed below.

Our in-game win probability: the score and the time left, starting from the betting line (or the home edge alone when there is none), with goals at the league’s rates for the score. Overtime is drawn at a fixed width. Shaded above the middle while the Islanders were ahead in it, below while the Sharks were.
#WhenWhat happenedWin probability forNext drive
1 P1 11:31 Collin Graf scored on a snap shot from 26 feetShooting · 14% chance +15% SJS –
2 P1 10:34 Bo Horvat scored on a wrist shot from 22 feetShooting · 9% chance +16% NYI –
3 P1 9:30 Casey Cizikas scored on a wrist shot from 10 feetShooting · 10% chance +15% NYI –
4 P1 5:44 Adam Gaudette scored on a snap shot from 6 feetShooting · 25% chance +13% SJS –
5 P1 0:32 Emil Heineman scored on a wrist shot from 5 feetShooting · 22% chance +14% NYI –
6 P2 13:22 Matthew Schaefer scored on a wrist shot from 8 feetShooting · 16% chance +12% NYI –
7 P3 9:44 Macklin Celebrini scored on a wrist shot from 29 feetShooting · 8% chance +12% SJS –
8 P3 8:45 William Eklund missed the net with a snap shot from 6 feetShooting · 28% chance +9% NYI –

Adjust the assumptions

Think finishing is more skill than we do, or that the calls were luck? Change it and the coin-flip replay reruns in your browser.

Only coin-flips re-rolled

Sharks 30% · Islanders 70%

Final margin
Islanders by 1
Luck in goals
none
Luck-adjusted margin
Islanders by 1.0
Replay with same day's form
Sharks 51% · Islanders 49% unchanged: why
How much of each is luck?

0% treats it as skill, 100% as pure luck. The tick is our fit.

What counts
Flip a play

Force the other outcome, in this game and in every replay: a goal becomes a save, a post goes in, a penalty goes the other way.

About these numbers

Play-by-play from the NHL via fastRhockey; expected goals, in-game win probability and the replays are our own models, fitted on every game since 2018-19 (methodology and validation). Blocked shots aren’t replayed (their location is the block’s, not the shot’s). No betting line for this game, so there is no before-puck-drop or fresh-game number.

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